Bill Whittle: The Republic of Bill

We all know what the Weenie Dictatorship looks like. But what if a Conservatarian could design his own, small-government society? What would it look like, and how would it work? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Republic of Bill Whittle. See the video and transcript below:

TRANSCRIPT:

THE REPUBLIC OF BILL

Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.

Certainly it’s not going to come as breaking news to anyone that there’s a lot of political discord and division in America today. Conservatives and Progressives are so far apart, and simply talk past each other so much, that’s it’s like we’re living in different countries.

And you know what? We’re supposed to be living in different countries. Before the unconstitutional, rampant centralization of Federal power over our lives, we were – and were supposed to be – separate countries, each with is own unique culture and preferences and cuisine and language and all the rest.

We know what the progressive, gun-controlled, safety-helmeted, calorie-restricted, carbon-neutral, politically correct Weenie Dictatorship looks like – they are trying to foist it on us every day. But if you could take a little chunk of America – say, five million steely-eyed missile men and another five million sleek and capable naughty librarians – and make your own little state with your own internal rules… what would it look like? Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Republic of Bill.

Politically, the fundamental structure of the Republic of Bill looks pretty familiar. It’s the US Constitution, verbatim. There are a couple of minor changes: a line item veto is one. Another is the 28th Amendment, which reads “No one elected to public office shall, once their term expires, be eligible to hold that same office.”

That’s right, you savages out there beyond our borders: there are no incumbents in the Republic of Bill. No campaign distractions, no lobbyist leverage, no vote buying, no nothing. We have this radical idea that we can find 535 new people, every two years, out of a population of ten million. There’s no one in the Congress of the Republic of Bill who was elected before the invention of electricity.

Citizens are encouraged to be heavily armed here in the Republic of Bill. That’s why our crime rate is so low. The general attitude here can best be summed up as “if that guy didn’t want to get shot then maybe he shouldn’t have come through my bedroom window.” We don’t tolerate crime here. That said, common sense is King herein the Republic of Bill: if some guy fires a shotgun through the door at a Jehovah’s Witness who came knocking, that guy is going to jail for murder. You’d think it might be hard to tell the difference between that and a home invasion. It’s actually very easy.

You can marry a person of the same sex in the Republic of Bill. You can marry your office chair if you’d like; we really don’t care. Some people say this de-sanctifies marriage; we think sanctity is internal and can’t be imposed by force of government. That said, there are some things you can’t do in the Republic of Bill and one of them is impose your will on others. If a church opposes gay marriage that’s their business; in the Republic of Bill you can’t make them do it and you certainly can’t make them accept it.

In a similar vein, we believe very strongly in private property in the Republic of Bill. That means if you own a restaurant and you want to hire only six foot tall albinos, that’s literally your business. It also means if you don’t want to serve peg-legged Arabs, or Lesbians, or conservatives, or gays or just me – that’s also your business. What we find, though, is that bigots are dirtbags. No one forces them to close their businesses. Most people just don’t give them their business, and they end up having close on their own. Works out really well, actually. Of course, that’s for private property only. Public services are utterly colorblind and racism of any kind is simply not tolerated.

Our economy is humming in the Republic of Bill. We have a few reasonable regulations for safety – and that’s about it. And we have a LOT of energy in the Republic of Bill: Oil, natural gas, and just boatloads of clean, safe, powerful thorium reactors. We’re thinking about air conditioning the entire outdoors.

Education and health care are very, very affordable in the Republic of Bill, and there’s a simple reason for that. It’s because we treat education and health care as commodities – because that’s what they are. Our schools compete for your children, and that means they are incentivized to have high test scores and low tuitions. And a two cent aspirin in the Republic of Bill costs two cents. Not twenty dollars. That’s because people pay cash for the small items, and doctors and hospitals show their actual rates and their customer ratings. They buy stop loss insurance for the big ticket items.

How can people afford to buy their own health care and education in the Republic of Bill? Well, they can shop around and get the best value with all the extra money they have, because income taxes in the Republic of Bill are 10%. You do your taxes in three minutes: Ten percent, and everyone pays. We don’t keep taxing to pay for the government; we get as much government as 10% buys.

Now, of course, if you want to pay for Public Radio, the Republic of Bill Endowment for the Arts, the Republic of Bill Superconducting Supercollider, a government-run retirement plan – any of that – you certainly can. You get a pull-down menu when you do your taxes online and you can earmark whatever additional funds you want to pay, and that’s where that money goes. But the ten percent buys what the government is supposed to do: defend the republic and build some roads. You want a bigger government than that? Knock yourself out.

As it turns out, about half of the 10 million residents of the Republic of Bill want a space program, and so they pay ten dollars a month extra in taxes: that’s six hundred million dollars a year. Combined with five million people in neighboring Burtrutanistan – you can see the leaders of the two countries here resplendent in our National uniforms – thats 1.2 billion dollars a year. With a space program run by engineers and test pilots, rather than politicians and bureaucrats, ten dollar bolts cost ten dollars and not 500 dollars. We expect to have a permanent presence on the moon in six years.

Well, we hope you enjoyed your brief tour of the Republic of Bill. You’re welcome to stay; we love hard-working people. The registration forms for legal immigration are on the counter; they’re printed in English because that’s the official language of the Republic of Bill. We’re happy to help translate into Spanish… or French, Mandarin, Russian, Korean or anything else. But we do business in English.

The rules are simple. Don’t be a jerk, and Mind your own business. It’s printed right there on the money, along with a cutout of a profile – not of me or any other politician. That profile could be anybody. That’s the profile of the common person. That’s your profile.